


Bombshell

by betts



Series: Honeycomb [3]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Car Accidents, F/M, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Semi-Public Sex, the great wip cleanout of 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 23:09:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8943226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betts/pseuds/betts
Summary: Ficlets of Hux's and Rey's POVs prior to Honeycomb





	1. Hux

**Author's Note:**

> I'm cleaning out my WIPs for year end and posting everything that seems worth posting. This was supposed to be the entirety of Honeycomb from Hux's POV but the idea didn't thrill me after I wrote these two chapters, and I got caught up in other stuff, so I thought I'd share what I have.
> 
> You'll notice a pseudo-plothole that indicates Poe lies to Ben in one of the later chapters of Honeycomb, when he says he had no idea Hux was married.

“Oh fuck,” Hux groaned as Elise guided his cock into her, the emerald silk of her gown threaded through his fingers as he gripped the wide expanse of her hips. The lace of her thong, shoved to the side, grated against his dick as she rode him, astride his thighs on the fainting couch of some country club’s ladies’ room. No lock on the door, two in the afternoon, a golfer not a hundred yards away outside the sweeping bay windows.

“Shut up,” she replied, cruel in a way that Hux shouldn’t have found so attractive. If she’d always been like this-- “Just get me off.”

Perfect black ringlets fell out of her elaborate updo, round cheeks flushed pink and the redness of her lips natural for once, from kissing Hux, from wasting her precious hundred-dollar lipstick all over his neck. He’d have to wash it off later, pointedly ignoring the crackled spots of mouth-shaped burst blood vessels around the collar of his navy blazer. At least the only ones he wore were hers; she came home covered in them anymore, not even hiding it, like an angsty teenager defying daddy. Hux had always treated her too gently to leave them on her perfect, tawny-golden skin. The thought of anyone else touching her without the same amount of care and reverence filled him with a kind of fury he no longer thought he was capable of.

Hux licked the pad of his thumb and reached between her legs to roll it around her clit. The strap of her dress fell off her shoulder, gaudy diamond necklace--the ten-year anniversary gift she’d purchased for herself--rattling with the rapid pace of her hips. She bunched the lapel of his suit jacket in her hand, the other bracing herself on the back of the sofa. His pants had slid barely low enough to avoid the splash zone of her inevitable climax, but Hux’s drycleaner had admittedly seen worse from him.

She leaned down and kissed him again, a high-pitched moan in her throat. Hux forced himself to devote this to memory, the floral scent of her perfume masking the nearly permanent smell of merlot on her breath, the plush softness of her lips and the sharpness of her teeth, the way she cooed, “Oh, baby, you feel so good, fuck,” and other nonsense that Hux generally found intolerable, but in the wake of the demise of their marriage, had already glossed into nostalgia.

Not ten minutes ago they were standing on a patio overlooking a lake, Elise laughing with several of her coworkers. Hux hadn’t missed how often she clutched the immense bicep of a pediatric surgeon named Joel, how she laughed too loudly at his jokes, head thrown back, using it as an excuse to inch closer to him. Hux saw the predatory heat in her gaze when she’d catch Joel’s eye, making him squirm in his seat, fresh meat out right out of his residency. Hux gritted his teeth as he stared at Joel’s mouth, comparing the wide shape of it to the marks that had been smattered about Elise’s breasts and stomach and thighs.

In another reality, Hux had taken Joel by the collar of his pastel green polo shirt and flung him into the lake. In this reality, Hux had slid his hand up his wife’s skirt under cover of the wide patio table and gently teased his fingers over her the seam of her panties. In another reality, the one behind Elise’s closed eyes, she was fucking Joel right now. In this reality, she was informing her husband, in actions and intuitions rather than words, of Hux’s worthlessness.

The thought nearly made him come.

He could feel her tensing up around him, breath shallowing out with her movements. Outside the door, two women laughed with one another, their clunking golf cleats an ominous noise that made Hux freeze his movements while they passed. He barely had time to lift his hand and stifle Elise’s shout into his palm as she came, rutting her hips in a filthy circle onto his cock, her walls pulsing around him. He met her movements, fucked up into her while steadying her at the small of her back. As she came down, Hux wrapped his arms around her waist and stood briefly before laying her on her back, never extricating himself before beginning to pound into her. She gasped in surprise and nearly let out a yelp before Hux covered her mouth once more. 

“Shut up,” Hux repeated back to her, mostly out of spite. Like the effect on him, Elise moaned into his hand, but there was no quieting the wet slapping sound of fucking her. It didn’t matter; he was already at the edge, already panting into her neck, mindless but for the endless depth of his devotion to her that she would never understand or accept or reciprocate. The tighter he gripped her, in every sense, the louder she screamed.

He came with stopped breath, spilling inside her, thrusts slowing to a halt as his cock continued pulsing. He only allowed himself a handful of seconds of afterglow, eyes closed and panting. He took the brief respite of euphoria to convince himself it was ten years earlier, the peaceful time in their relationship before Elise learned there was a difference between being in love with someone and obsessively seeking their approval. 

***

Elise blotted her newly reddened lips with a pack of twenty-dollar blotting papers, then tossed the paper in the trash. Hux once questioned the difference between blotting paper and literally anything else--toilet paper, paper towels, her wrist--and she had replied, simply,  _ Cost _ . 

She went about pinning her hair back as it had been before Hux had ravaged it with his fingers, while Hux stood at the next sink, predictably wiping her lipstick off his starched white collar. 

“We’ll pick up dinner on the way home,” Hux said, keeping his tone casual despite the dread of her response. In the back of his mind, he heard their therapist tell him to rephrase the command as a question:  _ Would you like to pick up dinner on the way home?  _ thereby giving Elise the opportunity to decline. But Hux didn’t want to give her the opportunity to decline; he wanted her to have dinner with him. Away from Joel. 

He side-eyed her in the reflection of the massive expanse of wall-to-wall mirrors. Women’s sitting rooms were apparently an unknown marvel of modern architecture.

“I think I’ll stay here a while longer,” Elise said, sliding the last bobby pin into her hair. For the life of him, Hux couldn’t figure out how she managed such an intricate ritual with graceful effortlessness. “Joel wanted to show me his vinyl collection.”

“Joel doesn’t look like he’s old enough to know what a vinyl is.”

Elise steadied a glare at him before sliding her clutch purse off the counter. Years ago, maybe even months ago, she would have taken the bait. Defended herself and her friend against Hux’s vitriol. Warred with herself about whether the order to have dinner was an instruction or a request. Always on the balls of her feet, ready for a fight. Hux had loved that about her. Instead, she smiled the same warm, placating smile she reserved for patients and replied, “I’ll be home later.”

She tapped their cheeks together in a goodbye kiss instead of ruining more lipstick on him, stilettos echoing in the wide chamber as she left him alone in the sitting room.

***

Finn laughed at him the moment Hux approached the Damerons’ apartment patio, covering his mouth and pointing at Hux’s neck. “Oooh, Daffodil got  _ laid _ .” Hux had no idea where the nickname  _ Daffodil _ came from, but he couldn’t imagine it was declared out of affection. “You finally find yourself a side dish?”

Hux glowered down at Finn’s sprawled-out form on a tiny pink children’s lawn chair, a textbook open on his lap. Hux’s wrinkled, untucked shirt covered the white splotches on the crotch of his pants he’d been unable to scrub out in the restroom, but from this angle, given how Finn had looked him up and down, the evidence was obvious. Though Hux owed him no explanation, out of some ghost of gut-instinct defense which made it sound more like a lie, he replied, “These are from my wife.”

“Sure, buddy,” Finn said, still laughing, “I know your type; your secret’s safe with me.”

“Aw leave him alone, baby,” Poe said, peering out the sliding glass door of his apartment while trying to barricade a yapping BeeBee with his foot. He gestured toward the apartment in invitation, nearly knocking off the white Panama hat perched at the back of his head. “C’mon in.” 

Hux followed, eyes squinting to read the words that adorned the back of Poe’s lime green booty shorts, partially covered by the length of his white linen t-shirt:  _ Baby Gurl _ . 

Hux didn’t understand Poe’s fashion choices, but he respected them.

Poe led him into the guest bedroom, a dramatic affair with walls covered in Mandala tapestries and lit with paper lanterns. Mismatched thrift-store cushions littered every inch of floor. As Hux entered, he slipped off his shoes at the door and shrugged his blazer from his shoulders to hang on the doorknob.

When he was properly  _ de-businessed _ , as Poe called it, he took a seat on a cushion across from Poe and accepted the proffered bong. Sometimes Hux did a quick pickup on his way home. Sometimes he stayed a while and chatted with Poe, whom he considered his only non-professional contact and thus, by definition, his only friend. But always, somehow, Poe knew Hux’s preference that day just by looking at him.  _ Your aura’s fucked, bro,  _ Poe once told him when Hux had asked how he knew. He never asked again.

His shoulders relaxed after his first hit, the twinge in his lower back ebbing away by the second. He hadn’t fucked Elise in a restroom in years, contorting in the myriad of ways required of rough public sex and unconsciously tensed at the fear of being caught; he was obviously in no shape to handle it. He passed the bong back, and as Poe took it, he asked, “You wanna talk about it?”

Hux exhaled and replied, “The sex or the resulting disappointment?”

“Kinda sounds like they go hand in hand in this scenario.” Poe flicked his lighter against the bowl and inhaled.

“I suppose you’re right.” Silence passed over them, quiet but for the muffled sounds of television and laughter in the apartment above them. “Don’t you ever get peace?”

Poe steadied a long, earnest look at him. “Bro, let me tell you, that is a loaded question coming from you.”

“I mean your neighbors. Do they ever shut up?”

“Oh. Nah, they’re good people. I don’t even notice--” Poe interrupted himself, looking  _ through _ Hux rather than  _ at _ him, as if some invisible hand had slapped him upside the head. His glassy, red-rimmed eyes refocused sharply on Hux, filled with sudden manic intensity. “I get it.”

“You get what?” Hux asked, warily.

“You. I get you.” 

Hux snorted a laugh. “I don’t even get me.”

“No no no, hear me out,” Poe fidgeted around until he was on his knees, resting on his heels and gesturing excitedly, bong all but forgotten on a square of cardboard that functioned as the only level surface in the room. “You’re getting divorced, right?”

“Not if I can help it.”

Poe gave him a deadpan glare, his head tilted slightly. “Dude, be real.”

Hux sighed. “It’s looking that way.”

“So you’re in this moral gray area--”

“Elise is in a moral gray area. I’m a stern proponent of black-and-white monogamy.”

“You’re miserable.”

Hux reached for the bong. He wouldn’t be able to survive this conversation sober. “I’m getting by.”

“That’s no way to live, man. This divorce is going to crush you.”

“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” Hux said as he flicked the lighter and inhaled.

“I’m just saying, what if you took up a good cause? You got a whole foundation for your philanthropy stuff, right? My idea is kind of like that. But fun.”

Hux exhaled. “The Hux Foundation is a PR move. Seventy percent of its overall expenses go to marketing itself.”

Poe, ignoring Hux’s blatant honesty, bit his lip and smiled in that grossly charming way that always made Hux two parts annoyed and one part enthralled. “You’re a good man, Hux.”

“I can point you to several million people who would tell you otherwise.”

“Well I’m not one of them. Remember when the apartment flooded and you threatened to buy out the apartment complex if the landlord didn’t replace the carpet? And you helped us forge our renters’ insurance because we didn’t have any? You didn’t have to do that.”

Hux handed the bong back to Poe. “I don’t see how this has anything to do with--”

“Two words,” Poe interrupted. “Sugar daddy.”

An image came to mind of a yellow box of candy he didn’t think he didn’t think he’d ever tried before. Then he settled into the idea Poe was actually suggesting. “What.”

“You got money, and you need to take your focus off the bad stuff, you know?”

“That’s not a real thing. That can’t be a real thing.”

Poe nodded eagerly and shuffled forward. “Oh it is, bro. It definitely is. You don’t gotta do anything either, I can get it all set up. Put you in touch with the perfect sugar baby for you.” When Hux didn’t reply, still dumbfounded, Poe continued, “Just think about it. A new relationship, not romantic because you’re obviously not ready for that, not entirely sexual either. Just doing nice things for someone, making them happy, taking good care of them.” When Hux still didn’t reply, doubt wavered on Poe’s face. “That is your thing, right?”

Hux cleared his throat and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, unfolding it and thumbing through the cash. He handed a few bills over and said, “Thank you for the suggestion, but given that you’re my drug dealer and not my therapist, I’ll just take my usual.”

***

Elise came home at two in the morning, her heels dangling from one hand while she tossed her keys in the bowl with the other. Millicent circled around her ankles and she squatted down to pet her. Hux peered at her over the top of his laptop, settled in his favorite armchair in the den, quickly closing out of the sugar daddy classifieds forum. She looked worse than when he’d left her--damp hair mostly fallen out of its elaborate updo, makeup melted off, but dress dry. Skinny dipping in the lake, Hux guessed. She smiled, though, not with her lips but in her eyes, cheeks rouged with thrill and tipsiness.

She didn’t acknowledge him as she bounded up the steps to the master bedroom. In the den, Hux already had the roll-out made. 


	2. Rey

Rey spent too much time staring at the frayed hole in Ben’s favorite pair of jeans, little tufts of blue thread stretched around his kneecap. He finally stopped growing, stopped walking around with pants two or three inches too short, t-shirts that showed his stomach whenever he lifted his arms. His clothes fit him now, his body fit him. The only part of his appearance that hadn’t yet slotted into its rightful place of adulthood was his hair, short and clumsily styled. She had gone with him to the barber just yesterday, spinning around in the chair next to his as he explained that he wanted it to cover his ears as much as possible, please. 

She glanced up his wiry body to his face, hair short, eyes filled with endless underestimated rage as he stared at the road ahead of them. 

Oh. They were young this time, like they were then. Exactly like they were then. Thighs shoved together, her small form pressed against his massive one and jostling with the poor shock absorption of the cab. Ben was yelling about something; Han growled non-words back. She hadn’t remembered it then, and she didn’t remember it now, not even enough to make it up.

Snow fell in enormous clumps in this iteration, sticking to the road and turning it into a barren wasteland. At this point, she’d never seen an American snowfall. She wouldn’t see one until months later, a few weeks after Christmas, staring out the window of the basement and not thinking or feeling anything at all, except the mild constant fear that Ben was in danger somehow, that he wouldn’t come home for her.

“It’s about to happen,” Rey told Han and Ben, but neither of them heard her. The dance had begun; she knew her part. She reached forward and started twisting the tuner to 94.1. Last time she made it all the way to 93.9. If she could just make it to 94.1, the accident wouldn’t happen. The infinite loop of this madness would finally stop.

88.1. “You should start downshifting,” she said to Han. He kept shouting.

89.7. “Will you save me again?” she asked Ben. He kept shouting.

92.9. “Maybe I’ll die this time,” she told herself. They kept shouting.

A flash of light. Han gasping, jerking the wheel. Ben’s arms wrapping around her, his body covering hers. The jerk of collision, the ground pulled up from beneath them. Never given the gift of unconsciousness, only the slow torture of shock. The sickening pop and crack of her bones crushed under an enormous weight. Blinding, searing, all-consuming pain.

And a question:  _ Will I die this time? _

***

Rey wrenched her eyes open. She kept her jaw clenched shut, silent except for her labored breathing and the thunderous pounding of her heart. Red numbers stared back at her--4:53. Her sheets felt soft against the bare skin of her shins and tangled around her ankles. A phantom ache crept up her left leg, a ghost of the injury. Her entire body trembled, but she willed it to stillness, willed her breathing to slow.

She got out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom, not bothering to turn on the light as she filled a cup with water and chugged it. Her heart finally evened out by the time she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, but instead of turning back toward her bedroom, she snuck down the hallway to Ben’s. 

She twisted the knob all the way to the right before pushing it open soundlessly, and didn’t close it behind her. Ben’s sleeping form provided a large lump of darkness contrasted in the pale moonlight filtering between the blinds, undisturbed by Rey’s intrusion. She crept around to the opposite side of his bed and lifted a corner of Grandma Padme’s afghan before carefully sliding next to him.

Ben’s breathing shifted from the even, low pulls of sleep to the shallow silence of waking. She could feel him at her back, the gut-instinct irritation at having woken. “Not again,” he muttered in his pillow.

She didn’t respond, instead curling as close to him as she could without touching him, an invitation, a weakness. She wasn’t strong like Ben, couldn’t get angry like Ben. When the world hurt her, she never fought back; she ran away, made herself small, tucked herself in Ben’s hulking shadow and hoped no one would be able to see her, always trusting that he would keep her out of harm’s way. 

He closed the distance between them, wrapping his arm around her middle, his body curling around hers like it had in the accident. He ran a handful of degrees too hot, stifling and overbearing like a desert. They were too old for this; it was too wrong, despite its innate innocence--the desire to be comforted, held by a loved one. Finding home in another’s embrace. 

“I’m sorry,” Rey whispered, clutching Ben’s hand and pulling him closer.

He squeezed her briefly, a reassuring, half-unconscious hug that belied the exasperation of his response: “It's okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the [Honeycomb masterpost](http://bettydays.tumblr.com/tagged/honeycomb-masterpost) if you're interested in seeing all the content that's been made for this verse.


End file.
